A Quiet Death

TWENTY-SIX

I was having a gorgeous, rejuvenating early-morning soak in a tub of lavender bubbles. I had just tipped a mug of coffee to my lips when my iPhone rang, vibrating like an electric shaver on the edge of the sink. I set the mug down on the bathmat and fumbled for the phone.

‘Hannah, it’s Lilith Chaloux.’

‘Lilith, how are you?’

‘I was wondering if you are free today. I need some moral support.’

‘Why?’

‘That man, James Hoffner, keeps calling and bothering me. Nick must have given him my number, damn it.’

‘Hoffner’s a creep, but what can we do?’ Quite likely, he was a blackmailer and a murderer, too, but what good would it do to share my suspicions with Lilith? It could only alarm her further.

‘He says he has a proposition to discuss with me. I don’t want to discuss anything with him, but he says it will be to my advantage. He’s coming over today. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.’

‘Why don’t you simply leave, Lilith? Go shopping at the Queenstown Outlets for the day? I’ll be happy to join you.’

‘That will only delay the inevitable. He doesn’t give up easily.’

Lilith had hit the nail on the head. I pictured Hoffner in his green pickup truck, engine idling, waiting at the intersection of Taylors Island and Deep Point, watching for Lilith’s Toyota to appear in his rear-view mirror. ‘Do you want me to call the police? Say he’s harassing you?’

Lilith drew a quick breath. ‘It’s not harassment yet. Besides, I’m just getting back on good terms with my son, and I don’t want any setbacks in that department. Hoffner seems to have Nicholas’s ear, so, as much as I dislike the man, I don’t want to alienate him.’ She paused for a moment, the air on her end of the line filled with the babble of a television. ‘I’ve never approved of the people Nicholas likes to hang out with and I don’t suppose I will start to approve of them now.’

‘It’ll probably please you to hear, then, that Nicholas has fired the creep.’

‘The first sign of common sense I’ve seen in the boy.’

Realizing my bath was going to be cut short, I pulled the plug. There was no way I’d leave Lilith alone with Jim Hoffner, at least not intentionally. With the phone anchored to my ear, I stood and fumbled for a towel. ‘It’ll take me about and hour to get there, maybe an hour and fifteen.’

‘Oh, thank you, Hannah!’

‘My fee is high, Lilith. You might just have to paint me a picture some day.’

‘Hannah, I would be delighted!’

I drove as fast as the speed limit allowed – and at times a bit faster – making it to Lilith’s cottage outside Woolford in a little over an hour. Her Toyota was in the drive. I pulled up behind it, pocketed my iPhone which had been recharging in the console, and climbed out.

The sun slanted through the trees, but a bit of early-morning chill still clung to the air. I regretted running out of the house so quickly that I’d forgotten to put a fleece on over my T-shirt and jeans.

Lilith had told me she’d be in her studio, so I jogged through the woods in that direction, but when I stuck my head into the studio and called out, she wasn’t there. She wasn’t on the patio either, or sitting on the dock near the water.

Lilith had telephoned from her house. I knew that because I had heard the television. Surely she didn’t intend for me to meet her there! But if her car was in the drive, I reasoned, she had to be around somewhere.

I jogged back to the house and let myself in through the kitchen door. ‘Lilith! Are you here?’

There was no answer.

I listened to the silence, made even odder by the fact that I couldn’t hear the television. ‘Lilith?’

Following the path Lilith had made through the disaster that was her kitchen, with one eye constantly on where I was placing my feet, I stepped carefully into the central hallway, calling her name. She wasn’t in the shambles of her living room, or anywhere in the wreck of the hall.

The door to the bathroom was closed. Fearing Lilith had taken a tumble in the tub, I knocked, pushed it open, but she wasn’t in the bathroom, either. ‘Lilith!’

While wending my way out of the bathroom, I was distracted by a noise. Was somebody calling my name? I high-stepped cautiously over a pile of folded towels, but didn’t see – until it was way too late – the Charmin UltraSoft 2-Ply Jumbo Pack just on the other side. My foot came down on the Charmin, slipped out from under me, and suddenly I was flying head-first across the narrow hallway. My forehead came to a sudden stop against the doorframe of what might have been, in a previous life, a linen closet, knocking me silly.

‘Damn, damn, damn!’ I shook my head, trying to dissipate the stars that were doing colorful loop-de-loops behind my eyeballs. With my fingers, I explored the knot on my forehead, already beginning to swell.

Feeling stupid, I struggled to my feet, leaning against the wall for support. I imagined my obituary: Hannah Ives, late of Annapolis, died in a tragic accident when she tripped over a twelve-pack of toilet paper. How embarrassing. Paul would never forgive me.

‘Lilith!’

This time, I thought I heard a reply. The door to the guest bedroom stood ajar, but Lilith wasn’t in among the ruins. Still massaging the bump on my head, I staggered over to the master-bedroom door and pushed on it hard, but it refused to open. ‘Lilith!’ I called.

‘I’m in here!’ Her voice, normally soft, was now only a whisper.

‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere!’ I rattled the doorknob, turned it, pushed, but the door still wouldn’t budge.

‘I was searching for the TV remote, so I started moving boxes and suddenly everything fell in on me.’ Lilith was in tears.

Oh dear, the domino effect. Having been in Lilith’s bedroom, it wasn’t hard to imagine. Borrowing a move I’d seen on a dozen cop shows, I stepped back, then rammed the door with my shoulder, but only succeeded in creating a one-inch gap. I put my lips to the opening and called out, ‘Are you hurt?’

‘I think my ankle’s broken,’ she wailed. ‘Oh, God, it hurts!’

‘I can’t get the door open, Lilith! What’s blocking it on your side?’

‘Stupid, stupid, stupid! I’m so embarrassed, Hannah!’

‘Lilith, don’t worry about that now. Can you crawl over to the door?’

A whimper. ‘No.’

‘OK. I’m going to call for help. Hang in there.’

I reached into the pocket of my jeans to retrieve my iPhone, but it wasn’t there. I patted all my pockets, front and back. No luck. I leaned against the doorframe, momentarily confused. I distinctly remembered slipping the phone into the right back pocket of my jeans when I got out of my car. Where the hell had it gone?

The toilet paper, Hannah! Your daredevil dive across hall, like one of the Flying Wallendas, but without a net.

Shit!

I staggered down the hallway to the bathroom, sank to my knees and began pawing through the piles of debris that littered the area. My phone hadn’t landed in the Tupperware container of toothbrushes, dental floss and mint-flavored floss picks. It hadn’t slipped under a tipsy stack of Architectural Digests going back to 1978. It wasn’t nestled among the jumble of brand new towels and washcloths, still wearing their price tags, now strewn across the beige shag carpet.

I collapsed against the wall in dismay. I had been traveling at high velocity when I took that header, and so had my iPhone. It could have ended up anywhere among all the rubbish.

‘I’ve lost my cell phone, Lilith. Do you have yours?’

‘It’s on the dresser, but I can’t reach it from here. My ankle’s pinned.’

Great.

At that point my choices were two. Leave Lilith and drive out to look for help, or stick around and try to rescue her myself. I decided to stay.

‘All right, don’t panic. Are you near the door?’

‘No, I’m over by the television. My ankle’s under the television!’

‘OK, stay put. I’m going to get this door open if it’s the last thing I do.’

I stepped back and studied the situation. Lilith’s bedroom door opened in, so the hinges were on her side of the door. So much for Plan A: hammering out the hinge pins and simply removing the damn door.

On to Plan B. It took me a few minutes to move a heap of mail-order catalogs aside – Harry & David’s Fruit of the Month Club! 1994! – clearing a spot in the hallway where I could sit down. I took a deep breath, braced my back against the wall, placed the bottom of both feet against the door and pushed, hard, so hard that my legs began to tremble. The door rewarded me by moving a scant two inches.

I got down on my hands and knees and slid my hand inside the room, feeling around carefully for the obstruction, expecting something big, a chair for example, but the first thing I touched was a shoebox, then a book, then a pillow, then something square and flat that could have been a picture frame. Keeping my hand through the crack, I stood, feeling my way slowly up, higher and higher, obstruction after obstruction.

‘Tell me what I’m working against, Lilith!’

‘Shoeboxes, blankets, sheets and a bookcase, I’m afraid.’

‘Keep your head down!’ I wrapped my hand around something soft near the top of the pile and threw it as hard as I could toward the far corner of the room.

One object down and how many thousands to go?

I sent another object flying, then another. After every ten tosses, I shoved on the door. At the end of five minutes it had moved another half inch, no more.

Breathing hard, I rested my throbbing forehead against the door in frustration. There had to be another way. ‘Lilith! Do you think I can get in through the bedroom window?’

‘Oh, Hannah, I’m sorry. The previous owners nailed the windows shut. And I never got around to, to…’

‘Never mind. Just keep your head down.’

After a bit more work, the gap in the door had widened enough so that I could start pulling smaller items – shoes, handbags, cross-stitch embroidery kits – out into the hall with me. I was working on a decorative pillow which gave up the fight with a soft sucking sound, when somebody called out, ‘Anybody home?’

I recognized the voice at once. Jim Hoffner, making his promised appearance. As much as I despised the man, I didn’t take the time to engage in any confrontational banter. ‘Hoffner! I need help. Lilith’s trapped inside her bedroom and the door is jammed. I can’t find my cell phone. Can you call 9-1-1?’

‘Sorry.’

I stood up, pillow in hand. I stared at Hoffner as he weaved down the hallway in my direction, his yellow windbreaker shining like a beacon in the dark. I took his ‘sorry’ to mean he didn’t have his phone.

‘OK, but you’re a strong guy. Help me break this door down, will you?’

Hoffner simply glared. ‘Where are Chandler’s love letters?’

‘What’s going on out there?’ From her bedroom prison, Lilith sounded like a little girl lost.

I ignored Lilith and answered Hoffner instead. ‘How the hell am I supposed to know? I returned the letters to Lilith. You can ask her that question yourself, after we get her out of there.’

Hoffner’s eyes narrowed dangerously. When he raised a hand, I flinched. I pointed at my eye. ‘I’m already working on a hell of a shiner, Hoffner. You planning on giving me a matched pair?’

Hoffner kicked a pile of wicker baskets out of his way and strong-armed past me. He began pounding on Lilith’s bedroom door. ‘Where the hell did you put those letters?’

Her answer was simple. ‘In a safety deposit box.’

‘Where?’

‘They’re mine, Mr Hoffner,’ she shouted. ‘Why should I tell you?’

‘Fuck!’ Hoffner spun on his heel and careened down the hall, scattering Lilith’s things in his wake. Instead of leaving by way of the kitchen, though, he hung a right into the living room where I could hear him crashing about in frustration, swearing, giving every profanity in his vast vocabulary an airing before giving up and leaving via the back door, the way he had come.

No way Hoffner could make the mess in the living room any bigger than it already was, so I ignored his rampage and focused on the bedroom door. ‘I think he’s gone,’ I told Lilith after a while.

The gap between the door and its frame was now about twelve inches. I tried to squeeze my body through sideways, sucking and tucking and regretting, when it didn’t work, that I’d eaten three pancakes for breakfast.

Push, grab, toss.

Push, grab, pull.

I stopped work for a moment to catch my breath, inhaled deeply, smelled smoke. A neighbor burning early fall leaves, I thought, or cranking up the wood stove to ward off the morning’s chill.

‘Hannah? Are you still there?’

‘I’m still here.’

Just for the sake of variety, not because I thought it would work, I leaned against the bedroom door and tried shoving it with my back instead of my shoulder. Suddenly, something on the other side gave up the fight, the door yawned open another two inches and I was able to ease myself through.

I found myself standing knee-deep in a jumble of boxes and loose clothing. The bookshelf I’d been working against lay askew, its top butted against the footboard of the bed.

‘Lilith? Where are you?’

From around a lopsided aluminum rack hung with plastic-covered dry cleaning, a tiny hand waved like a flag of surrender. ‘Over here.’

I found Lilith, wearing pink silk pajamas, lying on her side between the bed and the window. It was immediately obvious what had happened. The elderly television stand – a K-Mart blue light special, unless I missed my guess – had collapsed, sending a DVD player, a cascade of DVDs and the television itself forward, pinning her legs.

I waded closer, slipping and sliding over plastic storage containers that shifted dangerously under my feet. The television was an ancient, wedge-shaped model, housing a giant cathode ray tube. It was still connected to the DVD player by old-style audio and video cables, snarled and tangled like a platter of colorful spaghetti. I kicked clothing aside until I was standing on solid floor, bent my knees, wrapped my arms around the massive set and tried to raise it. ‘Ooof!’ I said, defeated. ‘Damn thing weighs a ton.’

Bracing my back against the footboard of the bed, I shoved the television up and aside with my feet, freeing Lilith at long last.

‘Oh, thank you, thank you!’ Lilith breathed. She dragged herself into a sitting position.

I kneeled down to check my friend for damage. Both her shins were scraped and bleeding, her left ankle purple and beginning to swell. I touched the ankle gently. ‘Can you move your foot?’

Wincing, Lilith rotated her foot. ‘It hurts, but I guess it’s not broken.’

‘Let me help you out of here.’

‘I’m so embarrassed,’ Lilith wept as I pulled her up until she was leaning against me, her injured leg crooked behind her. ‘I didn’t want anybody to see this terrible house. Nobody will understand, and I can’t explain.’ Tears streamed down her face.

‘Can you put weight on your foot?’

She tried it, yelped. ‘Ouch!’

‘Bad idea,’ I said.

‘No, I can do it.’ She set her foot down experimentally, winced. ‘Lend me a shoulder?’

With Lilith’s arm draped around my neck and my arm around her waist, we hobbled toward the bedroom door with me kicking obstructions aside like autumn leaves.

‘I smell smoke,’ Lilith said. With her free arm, she pointed. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Look!’

Tendrils of smoke drifted through the narrow opening I’d made between the door and its frame.

‘Wait here.’ I escorted Lilith to the bed, shrouded by mountains of clothing except for a small, semi-circular nest she’d dug out for herself. ‘I’ll be right back.’

Heart pounding, I eased into the hallway, stumbled along, following the smoke down the hall and into the kitchen.

‘Jesus!’ The passageway leading to the back door was engulfed in flames, the boxes it had contained burning brightly, buckling, collapsing in on one another. Flames licked greedily at the stove. Was it gas or electric? I couldn’t remember.

On the floor near the refrigerator, a stray issue of Life magazine from December 1989 smoldered, its cover gradually blackened and curled, the image of a smiling Jane Pauley transformed bit by bit into a negative of gray ash.

Did Lilith have a fire extinguisher? I gripped the back of a kitchen chair and laughed hysterically. Of course she had a fire extinguisher. Maybe two, maybe a hundred! Somewhere under all this crap!

In the kitchen, the heat was intense. A wall of flame blocked the back door, our only exit. Somewhere in the basement, a smoke alarm began to scream.

Keeping my head low, I made my way to the bathroom, scooping up a couple of towels along the way. I tossed the towels in the bathtub and turned on the shower, soaking them with water. When they were thoroughly wet, I returned to the bedroom where I’d left Lilith.

‘That crazy bastard set your kitchen on fire,’ I told her, my voice urgent. ‘Here, you may need this.’ I draped a wet towel over Lilith’s head, put one over my own head, then grabbed her by the hand. ‘We’ll have to go out through the front door!’ I croaked, dragging her down the cluttered hallway after me. ‘Keep low. Crawl if you have to.’

When we reached the perimeter of the living room, I dropped her hand so that I could use both of mine to shove boxes aside. ‘Help me!’ I yelled when I noticed that Lilith had simply plopped herself down among the ruins. ‘We’ve got to get to the door!’

‘That’s my new coffee-maker!’ Lilith moaned as I sent one biggish box flying into the piano. Seemingly oblivious to the smoke and the heat, she held another box in her hands and was gazing at it, looking morose. ‘This is a tide clock!’

I knocked the box out of her hands. ‘Lilith!’ I screamed. ‘Screw the tide clock! We have to get out of here!’

It seemed like hours, but it probably took only a few adrenaline-fueled minutes for Lilith and me to clear a path to the front door. It was then that I understood what Hoffner had been doing while he was crashing around Lilith’s living room. He’d engaged the deadbolt. Stolen the key.

Son of a bitch!

I began searching desperately for an object I could hammer against the living-room window.

Maybe all of Lilith’s junk was working in our favor, I thought as I floundered around, flinging boxes aside. I didn’t know how long it would take for the fire to consume all the magazines and newspapers that were stacked in the back hallway, spilling over into the kitchen. What worried me was the smoke, swirling, growing thicker, gathering in a dense black cloud that pushed against the ceiling, descending more quickly than I thought we had time for.

‘Lie down on the floor!’ I yelled to Lilith. I yanked the drapes off the windows, grabbed a lamp, shade and all, and took a swing. The lamp shattered, but the window remained intact. ‘Shit!’

From her spot on the floor next to the front door, Lilith coughed. ‘Fireplace poker!’

‘Where?’

With one hand covering her mouth, she used the other to point toward the far wall. With all of Lilith’s goddam rubbish in the way, the fireplace and its tools might as well have been in Siberia.

My clothing clung to me, wet and hot. My skin smarted. I surveyed the room, eyes stinging, spotted what I thought might be a coffee table under a mound of quilts and thrashed my way toward it. I swept the quilts aside, pulled the table toward me and flipped it over. A cheap table, thank God, with screw-on legs. I wrenched off one of the legs and was crawling toward the window with my head protected by the wet towel when someone began pounding on the outside of the front door. ‘Mother! Mother! Are you in there?’

‘It’s Nick!’ Lilith croaked.

I didn’t have a second to waste in wondering how Nicholas had gotten there. I pressed my cheek to the door. ‘Nick! The deadbolt’s thrown and we don’t have a key. Can you break down the door?’

‘Wait a minute!’ Lilith cried. ‘There’s a spare key in the flowerpot!’

‘Did you hear that, Nick?’ I shouted. ‘Spare key! Flowerpot!’

Nick heard. In seconds the deadbolt turned and the door flew open. A tsunami of air whooshed past us as we stumbled out of the burning house and collapsed on the brick steps, coughing until our lungs ached.

Supporting himself on a cane, Nick backed away from us, limping painfully, face sweaty and streaked with soot. ‘We tried the front door, we tried the back! Burned my hand on the doorknob. Jesus, Jesus!’

‘It was Hoffner,’ I screamed, too preoccupied to wonder who ‘we’ were. ‘He’s crazy, Nick! He set the fire. Have you called 9-1-1?’

Nick wore a soft neck brace, held on by Velcro straps, so he nodded with difficulty. ‘I came in a cab. The cabby called it in.’

A metered cab all the way from Baltimore? How much did that cost, I wondered as I guided Lilith down the steps. I couldn’t help it. Must have been my New England genes, frugal down to the last molecule.

After Nick had paid off the cab driver and insisted he be on his way, I said, ‘Thank you, Nick. If you hadn’t showed up…’ I let the sentence die.

‘I telephoned, Mother didn’t answer, and I got worried. Hoffner’d been acting so squirrelly.’

Lilith and I staggered past Nick, across the driveway and on to the grass. With tears streaming down her face, Lilith watched her house burn. ‘My things! All my precious things!’

I thought about all the ‘precious’ handbags, shoes and wicker baskets, all the indispensable toiletries, medical supplies and cross-stitch kits. The four Crock-Pots still in their original boxes, more than a dozen different flavors of Kraft salad dressing – from Asian Toasted Sesame to Zesty Italian – the sixteen-ounce bottles arranged on her kitchen window sill like mismatched chessmen. I grabbed Lilith’s arms in case she took it into her head to dash back into the inferno to try to save them. I dragged her across the lawn, forced her to sit down against a tree, well away from the blazing house.

Out in the driveway, every door of Lilith’s Toyota stood open; its trunk yawned. Hoffner had torn her car apart looking for the letters. Mercifully, he hadn’t bothered with my Volvo.

I was rubbing sweat and soot off my face with the tail of my shirt, looking around, wondering where the bastard had gotten to. He had to be somewhere in the neighborhood, I knew, because his truck – GOTALAW – still sat at the edge of the drive not far from the tree where I had parked Lilith.

I wondered if Hoffner knew about Lilith’s studio. No telling what he’d do to the studio – snap her brushes, squeeze paint out of the tubes, trash her paintings. If you had a giant yard sale, sold the entire contents of Lilith’s house, you wouldn’t equal the value of even one of her paintings, at least not in my opinion.

A sudden movement caught my eye, a flash of yellow at the perimeter of the woods. ‘What’s out there?’ I asked Lilith who was eyeing Hoffner’s truck with murder on her mind.

‘A tool shed. Gardening stuff. A riding mower.’

‘Keep an eye on your mother,’ I told Nick. ‘Don’t let her anywhere near the house.’

I was glancing around the yard, looking for something I could use as a weapon, when Jim Hoffner stalked into view, bold as brass, heading for his truck and a quick getaway.

When he got within range, I flew at him like a banshee, attacking him with both fists, pummeling his chest like a jackhammer. ‘You bastard! You set that fire on purpose! We could have been burned alive!’

Hoffner laughed, a manic, Halloween funhouse cackle that chilled me to the bone.

Infuriated, I cocked my arm, but before I could get off a good left hook to his jaw, Hoffner grabbed me by the hair, twisted my head painfully, and threw me to the ground. His right hand dived beneath his jacket and, almost before I could blink, I was staring up into the business end of what looked like a 9mm Glock.

‘Bitch!’ The arm holding the big black gun didn’t waver.

‘Hoffner, don’t!’ Nick yelled.

Hoffner’s lip curled nastily. ‘I have to, Aupry. Thanks to you and your big fat mouth, she knows.’

Lilith struggled to her feet, her eyes wild, wide. ‘Stop! Is everybody crazy?’

Nick limped toward Hoffner. ‘You can’t, Hoffner! Hannah saved my life. She called the paramedics, she held my hand, she prayed with me, for Christ’s sake, when we both thought I was dying.’

Sirens began to wail in the distance. With half my brain I willed them to hurry, with the other half, I prayed. Please God, please, I’m not ready to go!

It didn’t seem to occur to anybody that if Hoffner wanted to weasel out of the mess he’d created, he’d have to dispose of three witnesses, not just one.

‘What’s that man talking about, Nicholas?’

Nick faced his mother. ‘Hoffner believes your letters will be worth a lot of money to a certain party who will pay anything to keep his dirty little secret.’

Lilith opened her mouth, but nothing came out. I could almost see the wheels going around, taking it all in. The ‘dirty little secret’ was Lilith herself.

‘Tell him where the letters are, Mother. Nothing’s worth getting shot over.’

Lilith stiffened. ‘I put them in a safety deposit box where they can’t do anybody harm.’

Suddenly the gun wasn’t pointing at me, but at Lilith. ‘I don’t believe you! Let’s go. Get them!’

Lilith folded her arms across her chest, set her jaw. ‘No.’

Hoffner took a step in Lilith’s direction. ‘You’re coming with me. Now.’

Without warning, Nick’s cane shot out, knocking the gun out of Hoffner’s hand. The gun landed on the grass at my feet. I snatched it up, cocked my arm and threw the gun as hard as I could, watching with pleasure as it spiraled into the flaming house.

‘God dammit!’ Hoffner bolted for his truck, gunned the engine and fishtailed down the drive. Before he had driven more than one hundred yards, the brake lights flashed red, the truck skewed sideways, and he leapt out of the cab. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ I asked aloud.

Lilith held up a box cutter, shrugged. ‘When he wasn’t looking, I messed with his tires.’

‘Lilith, how…?’ I indicated the box cutter.

‘I picked it up when we were in the living room.’

I could have hugged her.

Hoffner bobbed like an apple, hesitating, caught between an oncoming fire truck on the one hand and an angry mob of three on the other, one armed with a box cutter, a second with a cane, and me with a rage so hot and intense that if I tore Hoffner to shreds with my teeth and bare hands, no court in the world would have held me responsible. Hoffner sprinted toward the woods, heading in the direction of Fishing Creek.

The pumper unit from the Church Creek Fire Company screeched to a halt at the foot of the drive, inches from Hoffner’s front bumper. His truck was blocking their way.

A radio crackled. Permission apparently asked and granted, because seconds later the fire truck advanced, made contact with Hoffner’s vehicle and shoved it, grinding and lurching, into a stand of trees where it sat, slewed sideways between two giant tulip poplars.

Hoffner’s yellow jacket disappeared into the trees. If he continued in that direction, I worried, no way he’d miss Lilith’s studio.

‘Is everyone out of the house?’ a fireman asked as he hopped out of the truck.

‘Yes. We’re all here.’ I said.

‘Good,’ he said as his colleagues busily unrolled their hoses. The pumper roared to life and water began to play against what remained of the roof of Lilith’s cottage, sizzling, changing the smoke from black to white as clouds of steam arose from the ashes.

‘Injuries?’

Nobody spoke. Nick leaned on his cane, Lilith against a tree, leg bent, stork-like, at the knee. With the exception of the firemen who clearly had other priorities, I was the only able-bodied person in the neighborhood. If anybody was going to stop Hoffner, it had to be me.

‘Nick, I need to borrow your cane.’ With Hoffner’s gun gone, I hoped the weapon would give me some tactical advantage.

Nick looked confused.

‘Wait a minute,’ his mother said. She uncurled her fingers revealing the box cutter cradled in her palm.

‘My God,’ I whispered, considering the implications. Slashing tires was one thing, but a living human being? I shivered. Yet Hoffner had just proved how dangerous he could be. I took the box cutter from Lilith, opened and closed it experimentally a few times, admiring the way the razor moved smoothly in and out of its casing. ‘Just in case,’ I told her, securing the blade and slipping the cutter into my pocket.

Then I sprinted into the woods after James Hoffner.

As I suspected, Hoffner had found Lilith’s studio hideaway. When I charged through the door, his back was to me and he appeared to be studying ‘Sailboat 23,’ still clamped to Lilith’s easel.

‘The police are on the way, Hoffner. I’d blow this joint if I were you.’

He turned to face me, slowly, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He grinned malevolently. ‘It’s just you and me, then, Mrs Ives? Mano-a-mano?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. Do you have to be so melodramatic? There’s nothing here, as you can see. Lilith told you. She’s put her letters into a bank vault. What don’t you understand about that, Hoffner? No point in discussing it with me. Why don’t you go away now and discuss it with the bank officers at BB &T?

‘What do you expect to gain from the letters, anyway?’ I pressed on. ‘Chandler’s not going to give in to blackmail. He’ll simply acknowledge the affair and move on. Every public figure is having affairs these days. It’s quite the thing. Lynx News isn’t going to fire him because of a simple affair.’

Hoffner smiled dangerously. ‘It isn’t Chandler.’

‘Dorothea? Don’t make me laugh. She’s known about her husband’s affair with Lilith for years.’

‘That’s not what she told me.’ With a swipe of his arm, he swept ‘Sailboat 23’ off the easel. Without taking his eyes off me, he stepped on the painting. When the canvas only sagged, he stamped on it repeatedly. ‘Marriage! Reputation! Social standing! That’s what motivates Doro Dearest.’ A savage kick sent the ruined painting flying into the wall where it knocked over two others, like dominoes.

Several hundred yards away, Lilith’s house was turning into a pile of ash. What remained in this studio was all she had, and I wasn’t going to let Hoffner ruin that, too.

Hoffner’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth, to threaten me, probably, but before he could utter a word, I heard sirens, supplemental fire trucks, I supposed, ambulances maybe, police. ‘Hear that, Hoffner? I told you, we called the cops. They’re coming for you.’

While Hoffner had been taking out his hostility on ‘Sailboat 23,’ I’d worked my way closer to the window and to the door that led out to the patio.

‘You!’ Hoffner snarled, turning away from the easel, backing me up against the chaise lounge. He reeked of gasoline. I hadn’t smoked for decades, but I wished I still carried matches so I could strike one, set his jeans on fire.

The box cutter bulged reassuringly in my pocket, yet I hesitated to use it. Slashing another person’s flesh, feeling their blood sluice over me, warm and red and smelling of copper… my stomach heaved.

I felt around for the afghan, found it where Lilith had draped it over the arm of the chaise, and tossed it over Hoffner’s head.

‘Goddammit!’ It took Hoffner only a moment to shrug his way out from under the afghan, but it was time enough for me to wrench open the back door and escape through it, running hell-bent for leather in the direction of the main house.

Hoffner, mad as a bull, charged after me.

About fifty yards down the path I collided, literally, with one of two firemen dragging fire hoses toward the creek. ‘Help! He’s after me!’ I panted.

The fireman looked puzzled. ‘Who, ma’am?’

I turned, equally puzzled, in time to see Hoffner crouching at the end of the pier, untying one of the lines that held Lilith’s motorboat to the dock. As the firemen and I watched, Hoffner stepped into the boat, tilted the outboard motor into the down position, stooped and squeezed the gas line bulb. His elbow shot out once, twice, three times as he yanked on the starter rope in an attempt to get the little engine going.

‘Is there a problem, ma’am?’ one of the firemen asked.

The distinctive roar of the outboard motor being revved up cut the breeze. With Hoffner’s hand on the throttle, the little boat backed, turned and shot into the creek, leaving a rooster tail in its wake.

Hoffner had gotten away.

‘No problem at all,’ I told the fireman, mentally turning Hoffner over to the vicissitudes of the wind and the tide. ‘I think my problem just solved itself.’

When I got back to what remained of Lilith’s cottage, I was pleased to see that the Madison Volunteers had powered up their pumper and water from the creek was now reaching the blaze. A third truck screamed up the drive. The volunteers from the Neck District did their best, too, but by then it was mostly too late. The roof of Lilith’s historic cottage had fallen into the shell of the building, leaving nothing but charred beams, blackened stone walls and an ancient chimney, standing erect and proud like a monument over the smoking ruins. Still the firemen remained, playing water on the house, chasing sparks and dousing flare-ups to keep the fire from spreading to the nearby woods.

Nicholas limped off to check on the damage Hoffner had done to his mother’s paintings, while I remained sitting under a tree, watching the firemen and comforting Lilith, my arm around her shoulders. Quite suddenly, she shivered and all the color drained from her face. ‘Lilith, are you OK?’ I thought about the chaise in her studio. ‘Do you need to lie down?’

Lilith shook her head, and slipped out from under my sheltering arm. ‘Zan!’

I turned to see John Chandler, dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, striding in our direction. Eyes on the prize, he weaved up the drive, deftly navigating a path between fire trucks and fire hoses, seemingly oblivious to the chaos going on around him.

Next to me, Lilith struggled to rise, but before she could get to her feet, Chandler had broken into a loping run, closing the distance between them in seconds. He seized Lilith by the hands and pulled her up, catapulting her straight into his arms.

‘You…’ Zan breathed, crushing Lilith to his chest. ‘I always…’

‘Zan, why are you here?’ Lilith asked when she came up for air.

‘My wife received a disturbing phone call this morning. I had to make sure you were all right.’ He stepped back, holding Lilith at arm’s length, eyes on scan as if checking her for damage. Seemingly satisfied that she wasn’t broken, he turned, noticing the firemen and the ruined house for the first time. ‘I see I’m too late.’

Before Lilith could comment, I stepped out of the shadows and into a patch of sun. ‘Her ankle’s sprained, but otherwise-’

‘You!’ Chandler interrupted. ‘Hannah Ives, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. It’s me. Quite obvious now that you didn’t tell me the truth when I visited you at your office.’

‘I’m sorry, but I thought I was doing the right thing.’ He paused. ‘For my family.’

‘At least you’re here now,’ I said. ‘That’s a step in the right direction. You mentioned a disturbing call.’

Chandler cleared his throat. ‘Guy named Hoffner. He’d been pestering Dorothea. This morning my wife and I had a showdown. I found out that she’d actually agreed to pay him money in exchange for the letters I wrote to Lilith.’

‘Hoffner doesn’t have the letters, Mr Chandler. Lilith does. There were some photocopies once, but Nicholas destroyed them. Hoffner doesn’t have anything to bargain with.’

‘Is that why…?’ Lilith began.

Chandler’s hands slid down Lilith’s arms, found her hands and grasped them tightly. ‘Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself, darling. A couple of months ago, a young man shows up at Lynx, asks to see me. I was out of town on assignment – US troops were leaving Iraq – so my PA put him off. She told him to make an appointment, come back in a couple of days. Later, after Meredith disappeared, we were reviewing the Lynx security tapes, and the minute I saw him waiting at reception, I knew. I had my research people check him out, just to be sure. Nicholas Aupry, born September 27, 1987. He’s mine, isn’t he Lilith? He has to be.’

Lilith caught her lower lip between her teeth. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks.

‘Darling, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘What good would it have done, Zan, except to feed your Catholic guilt?’

‘God, Lilith. All these years.’ He embraced her again, clinging to his former lover with quiet desperation, like a life preserver. ‘You haunt my dreams, so, even in sleep, there is no refuge.’ Looking at her again, drawing her in like a saving breath, he stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. ‘Remember Budapest? Eglise Matthias, Buda Castle, the view at night from Gellért Hill?’

Still weeping, Lilith nodded.

‘Well, that’s a pretty picture!’ Nicholas had returned, his face flushed, whether from exertion or pent-up rage, it was impossible to tell.

Lilith started.

Keeping his arm firmly around his lover, Chandler turned. ‘Son…’

‘You haven’t earned the right to call me that, Chandler!’

‘Nicholas, it’s true!’

‘Shut up, Mother. I’m not talking to you.’

Nicholas advanced, paused, screwed his cane into the grass and leaned on it heavily. ‘Where were you, Mr Chandler, when I lost my first tooth? Hit a home run? Graduated from college? Where were you when I nearly died?’

Chandler blanched. ‘I didn’t know, I swear.’

‘Yeah, sure. I’ve seen the photographs. I’ve read the letters. You and my mother didn’t keep secrets from one another. There must be another box of letters somewhere. Hell, a trunk full of letters for all I know. An affair like that. You don’t just cut it off cold turkey.’

‘Zan didn’t know about you, Nicholas. I never told him.’

Nicholas scowled. ‘Why not?’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me.’

‘It’s too late now,’ his mother said.

‘I’ll say.’ Nicholas turned away from his mother, sneered. ‘What will it do to your reputation, Chandler, if the world finds out that Mr Family Values has a bastard son?’

‘Nicholas…’ Lilith lurched toward her son.

Chandler grasped her arm, holding her back. ‘No, Lilith. Let me handle this.’

The look Nicholas gave his father was pure venom. ‘Bastard! That’s what they used to call me at school. But you are the bastard, Chandler, not me!’

Nicholas swung his cane in a wide arc, striking Chandler on the temple. Chandler stumbled, his knees buckled, blood began to stain his white hair crimson.

‘Zan!’ Lilith screamed.

Nick staggered back, looking bewildered. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…’

Incredibly, Chandler smiled. He whipped a handkerchief out of his back pocket and pressed it to his head. ‘Don’t worry. It’s only a flesh wound.’ He caught Nick in a steel-blue gaze and held him there, saying nothing, until Nick slumped and averted his eyes. ‘I understand, Nick. Completely. If I’d been you, I might have done the same thing.’

I wasn’t inclined to similar understanding. I glowered at Nick. ‘I think it’s time everybody told the truth, don’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’ Nick seemed genuinely puzzled.

‘I didn’t think much of that maniac you sent to my house, Nicholas.’ I waved, indicating the patch of woods into which Hoffner had so recently disappeared.

‘Hoffner?’

‘Yes, Hoffner. He tore my house apart, looking for your mother’s letters.’

‘Christ! I didn’t ask him to do that. How was I supposed to know he’d come unhinged like that? After the train crash, Hoffner tracked me down. Said he’d take my case, help me sue Metro and its board of directors. I was mostly out of it, drugged up and trussed up, so it was almost a week before I noticed that the bag with Mother’s letters in it was missing. Hoffner showed up at Kernan with some documents for me to sign, so I sent him to the trauma center to see if he could locate the Garfinkel’s bag. They gave him the note from you.

‘I couldn’t very well come and get them myself, could I?’ Nick rapped the cane against his bum leg where it rang hollowly in contact with the metal brace. ‘Can’t say I approve of his tactics, though. Never pick a lawyer off the Internet.’

‘We have attorneys, Nicholas,’ his mother said.

‘Listen to your mother, Nick. You’re going to need an attorney, aren’t you? Do you remember what you told me?’

Nick gaped at me in confusion. ‘Told you?’

‘On the train. You said, “I think I killed somebody.”’

Nick squinted, deepening the lines between his brows. ‘I did?’

‘You did. Just before you asked for your rosary.’

Nick sucked air in through his teeth. ‘God, no. Not me. I must have meant Hoffner. Ever since he returned Mother’s letters, I’ve had my suspicions. It’s been eating me up, thinking that it’s my fault he did it.’

‘Who did Hoffner kill, Nicholas?’ I asked, although I was certain I already knew the answer.

And so did Chandler. He’d done his homework, too. Before Nick could reply, Chandler said, ‘Hoffner killed Meredith Logan, my production assistant. When Nicholas showed up that Friday armed with one of my letters to Lilith, Meredith had to have recognized the handwriting.’ Chandler shot a glance at me. ‘So when Hoffner telephoned on Tuesday intending to make a deal, the stupid girl arranged an off-site meeting.’ Chandler cleared his throat. ‘Meredith was in love with me.’ He stole a glance at Lilith. ‘One of those surrogate father things, I assure you. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t have done to protect my reputation.

‘Unless Hoffner talks, we’ll never know exactly what happened at that meeting, but I think it’s fair to say it went badly, and Meredith ended up dead.’

Chandler turned to me. ‘I have good news. Capitol police caught Hoffner on a security camera, leaving Lower Senate Park via the parallel parking area on New Jersey Avenue not far from the Taft Carillon. There’s a warrant out for his arrest.’

Balanced on her good leg, the other hooked up daintily behind her like a ballerina, Lilith reached up and touched Chandler’s face. ‘Zan, I’m so sorry. I’m sure she was a very special young woman.’

Chandler cupped Lilith’s chin, tipped it up until he could meet her eyes.

‘Don’t look at me.’ She burst into tears. ‘My face is a mess,’ she sobbed. ‘And I’m still wearing my pajamas!’

Chandler simply smiled. ‘After all these long years, do you think I care about a little soot?’ He wiped her cheeks gently, one at a time with his thumb. ‘Will you have me, my darling? I don’t need to imagine life without you. It’s been a purgatory of my own making.’

‘But, but… what about Dorothea? Your girls?’

‘One of your American naval officers had a saying for this, I think. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”’

Lilith bowed her head, as if accepting to share the burden. ‘But your job, your show?’

Chandler tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. ‘Mike Huckabee has agreed to fill in for me on And Your Point Is? while I’m officially on assignment.’

Lilith grasped his arm. ‘Assignment? What assignment?’

Chandler smiled the famous smile that launched his broadcasting career, the smile that stole the hearts of thousands of female viewers at nine o’clock every weekday evening. ‘You, my dear.’

Underneath the veneer of soot, Lilith blushed crimson. ‘But afterwards, Zan, what then? Will Lynx News take you back?’

Chandler laughed. ‘Eliot Spitzer seems to have landed on his feet.’

Lilith looked confused. ‘Who’s Eliot Spitzer?’

‘A former New York state governor who threw his career away by spending tens of thousands of dollars on expensive call girls,’ Chandler explained.

I nudged Lilith with my elbow. ‘He charged them on his VISA or something.’

‘And he’s now…?’

‘A primetime commentator on CNN. Go figure.’

While Chandler excused himself to telephone the DC police, I stayed with Lilith. In spite of the firefighters’ best efforts, her cottage had been converted to a steaming, stinking, smoldering ruin. Hoffner had lost a gun to the flames, I’d lost another iPhone, and, except for her studio, Lilith had lost everything.

‘Well, I guess that solves the problem of cleaning out the house,’ Lilith joked. ‘Bring in the bulldozers! I’m relieved that Zan will never have to see the mess I’d allowed my life to become.’

‘Lilith,’ I said gently, ‘there are therapists who can help you deal with the hoarding.’

She waved me off, just as I had waved Paul off when he had suggested I might seek outside help for post-traumatic stress. ‘I watch reality TV, too, Hannah. I analyzed myself. Stuff was filling the emptiness in my life. I’d let Zan go, I’d turned my son over to others to raise, and I couldn’t bear to let go of anything else. By the time I figured that out,’ she added with a grim smile, ‘the situation had gotten entirely out of hand. Just thinking about what needed to be done sent me into a state of paralysis.

‘I didn’t think it mattered,’ she continued. ‘What I bought, what I kept, what I didn’t keep. It was nobody’s business but my own. It wasn’t hurting anybody.’

‘It was hurting you, Lilith. That house nearly killed you.’ I touched the knot on my forehead. ‘And it nearly killed me!’

Lilith touched my arm. ‘I’m sorry about that, Hannah, truly. And I can’t tell you how grateful I am for your help. I lied, you know. Zan’s letters aren’t in the bank.’

‘Surely you’re kidding. Where are they?’

She pointed to the smoking ruins of her kitchen. ‘In my oven.’

‘Oh, Lilith!’

‘It’s all right.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘The memories, they’re all right here. I know all of Zan’s letters by heart, even the dopey poems. What do you think has sustained me all these years?’

‘Love?’ It wasn’t really a question.

Next to me, Lilith nodded.

A sudden flare-up near the blackened hulk that used to be a refrigerator was quickly doused by one of the firefighters. I remembered its contents – champagne, caviar – and wondered if any of it had survived. Glancing sidewise at Lilith, at her beautiful face, radiant under all the soot, I suddenly understood. ‘The champagne,’ I said. ‘You kept it for Zan, didn’t you? Not if he came back, but when.’

‘You are a perceptive woman, Hannah Ives.’

‘Where are you going to sleep tonight?’ I asked after a moment.

‘Where I usually do. On the chaise lounge in the studio.’

Coming up behind us, Zan had overheard. ‘I don’t think so. We need to get you to a doctor. Have him take a look at that ankle.’

‘I’ll be fine. I’ve got some Ace bandages.’ She paused, giggled. ‘I had some Ace bandages.’

‘Like fifty of them?’ I said.

Lilith blushed. ‘Would somebody like to drive me to the drug store?’

‘How far can he get in that boat, Ms Chaloux?’ Detective Terry Hughes leaned against the fender of his white Taurus, its hood still hot after the hundred-mile drive from Washington, DC.

‘There’s a cup of gas, maybe two in the tank,’ Lilith told him.

The detective nodded. ‘Out of Fishing Creek into the Little Choptank, then. Maybe as far as the Bay. A few miles more, then he’s screwed.’

‘Oars?’ I wondered.

Lilith laughed. ‘I’m not that well organized.’

The Coast Guard located James Hoffner six hours later, floating in circles on the flats near James Island. He was cold and he was hungry. A bos’n gave him a blanket and a granola bar, which he ate huddled in the cabin of a twenty-five foot RBS with his hands cuffed in front of him. Detective Hughes was waiting for the boat in Cambridge, very pleased to take delivery.